America is cheap and abusive to teachers. Of course there is a staffing crisis.

The teacher staffing crisis is a direct reflection of educators rightfully recognizing that they don’t have to put up with a cheap and abusive career.

I graduated from college in the midst of both a recession and the implosion of the media, my chosen industry, and my job search reflected that.

After spending several months applying for jobs in and out of my chosen field, I got a serious job offer by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

They wanted me to teach English at an area high school.

My response was immediate: thank you but hell no.

I needed a job. I had to get the hell back out of my parents’ house. But I stubbornly refused to teach.

Much as I respect and appreciate teachers, I told myself it was already masochistic for me, someone not born rich and white, to try to make a living as a writer and person who can run his mouth on air and on the mic. Did I want to make it even harder for myself working as an uncredited teacher in an expensive state like California? Yes, it would be a consistent check, but not a big one.

Not a big enough check for all of the work teachers put in.

I decided that if I was going to suffer working in a field known for shitty pay, it would be one that didn’t involve being responsible for the education of someone else’s child.

I’ve since been asked about teaching gigs here and there, but I still don’t think teachers are paid enough for their patience so I’d rather do anything else until that changes.

Unfortunately, the people better suited to be educators than me are fleeing that field under similar logic.

There is no national database precisely tracking the issue of how many U.S. classrooms are short of teachers for the 2022–2023 school year, but there are plenty of state- and district-level reports pointing to staffing gaps ranging from the hundreds to the thousands.

In Texas, there’s long been an issue maintaining teachers, but due to the pandemic, already high rates have accelerated — with Houston alone reporting nearly 1,000 vacancies in early August.

In Maryland, more than 5,500 teachers reportedly left the profession this year — leaving Baltimore in particular with an estimated 600 to 700 vacancies.

In Florida, there are approximately 8,000 teacher vacancies.

The Nevada State Education Association estimated that roughly 3,000 teaching jobs remained unfilled across the state’s 17 school districts as of early August.

Likewise, Kansas officials are saying their shortage is the state’s worst on record — saying they have about 1,400 teaching jobs unfilled.

Department of Education officials in Pennsylvania are calling that state’s shortage a “crisis.”

Separately, there are reports of teacher shortages in California, Illinois, Arizona, and Missouri.

Teachers have expressed their unhappiness with the state of their profession.

In a June survey released by the American Federation of Teachers, seventy-four percent of respondents of nearly 2,400 members expressed dissatisfaction with the job, up from 41 percent in 2020. Moreover, 40 percent said they’d probably leave the profession in the next two years.

Teachers have long been grossly underpaid and severely underappreciated, but the pandemic made it worse.

Their health is at risk thanks to dumb anti-vaxx parents and their contagious children. They also now can’t even do their jobs in peace after the Republican Party decide to play on the racist, homophobic, and fascist leanings of its base by attacking school curriculum district by district. And they are only getting dumber with their efforts to bring teachers to heel.

Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina and likely gubernatorial candidate, recently declared that if elected, he would work to keep science and history out of elementary school classrooms.

In an upcoming memoir, Robinson reportedly writes, “In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies. We don’t need to be teaching science. We surely don’t need to be talking about equity and social justice.”

I already think Black Republicans are an embarrassment, but this quote is almost impressive in how stupid it is.

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis thinks simply rounding up the veterans and anyone who spent a little time in college is qualified to teach.

This is a crisis of our own making and it is easily solvable.

On Sunday, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called for teachers to be paid more.

“Unless we’re serious about providing competitive salaries for our educators, better working conditions, so that they can continue to grow, and then including teacher voices in this process of reopening and reimagining our schools, we’re going to constantly deal with shortage issues,” Cardona told CBS News.

According to the National Education Association, the average teacher salary in public schools was $65,293 in 2020–21 — ranging from a high of $90,222 in New York to $46,862 in Mississippi.

The median salary to buy an American home is now $76,000.

I am not good in math as a direct result of Texas’ longstanding teacher crisis, but I do know if teachers are being paid less than the median salary to buy a house, it’s no wonder they’re fleeing the field — especially when they can’t even do their job without some dumb ass in their business.

Pay my friends and all other teachers more money and let them teach in peace.

Then maybe one day I’ll seriously consider giving teaching a try — although probably not.